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Apple Announces 25 Million Song Downloads
Tweder writes "On Apple's iTunes site, Apple has announced that music fans have purchased and downloaded over 25 Million songs from the iTunes Music Store. It seems the launch of the ITMS on the Windows platform has boosted sales tremendously." I suppose this is where I am expected to say something along the lines of, "I thought the recording industry said that this business model wouldn't work, that people won't pay for what they can download for free?" So, there you go.
Yah, 25 million songs is VERY good, which works out to be about 2.5 million albums, but is Apple making any profit yet? My understanding was that Itunes was designed to sell Ipods and is making very, very, little profit due to all of the fees it has to pay to the RIAA and the owners, etc.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
So? There's probably more people that copy friend's CDs than buy their own and I don't see anyone bitching about that anymore.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
I disagree.
Must people, like me, who were big buyers of retail(brick and mortar) music went to downloading music online for free because it was easier than heading down to the local music store.
It wasn't that I wouldn't pay for the music, it was just that it was easier to download it with a better selection of music. Now there are even easier ways to download music such as iTunes and other related services. I prefer to use them now than battling with file sharing systems. So now that it is the easiest meathod for me, that is what I use.
I always bought music because I liked it and wanted to be able to listen to it when I wanted to, over and over again, not to support the RIAA.
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The success of ITMS is that it shows that Jobs understands two things the RIAA does not: microeconomics and marketing. Think about it: iTunes Music Service isn't competing with the PressPlay, Napster 2, Real, or any of the other turkeys who assumed that people would simply want to buy their unfriendly, ad-crippled, bloated services out of a sense of duty, or just because they were feeling guilty.
No, I believe Apple intended all along to compete with a different class of "competitor:" Kazaa, LimeWire, AIMster and the others. Apple, in essence, pretended it was competing in a commoditized market, by which I mean a market in which the price of goods are in free-fall (or in this case, actually free). How does one compete in a commoditized market? By differentiating the brand with things the other commodity players can't provide: quality ("CD-quality" tracks), convenience (reliable, near-instant downloads), ease-of-use (easy searching and browsing), and bundling (integration with iTunes). This is something the other (albeit "illegal") competitors cannot match.
Folks can -- and undoubtedly will -- argue until the cows come home about whether ITMS is simply perpetuating the RIAA's cartel. (I personally feel that the RIAA's destruction is as pre-ordained as the setting sun, but that's a thread for another discussion). But you have to give Jobs credit for outside-the-box thinking, and for a willingness to take on an unconventional class of competitor.
Let me clue you in on something, outside of Slashdot, very few people know what DRM is. They simply don't care unless it gets in their way. That's where Apple has succeeded the most. It's hard to get to the limits of what they let you do with the music unless you're trying to mass-duplicate CDs.
I have a shitty sig!
Why treat your paying customers like (prospective) criminals?
Stores and businesses have been doing that for years and years. Any store that doesn't just put a box of their goods out on card tables in a vacant lot with a drop box to put payment in is 'treating their paying customers like (prospective) criminals', no matter how different the rhetoric sounds the way you put it.
A Good Intro to NetBS
All you're paying for is convenience
Nope. You are also paying for
1. Quality - You can be sure that the song you just downloaded doesn't go like "What the f*ck do you think you're doing!"
2. Peace of mind - Nobody is going to come to your home and sue you for copyright infringement.
3. Moral Satisfaction - You actually PAID for it, rather than copying the art work of someone else without permission.
and more...
getSexySig();
There is a difference between making no profit and making a loss. Real investors don't care if a product doesn't make much money as long as it pays for itself completely. Why? Because if a product does such AND continues to grow in volume the revenue and overall value of the company increases. In this case 25million songs is akin to selling over 8k more top of line powermacs. That revenue is a good thing even if it isn't profit. More importantly even if only every 10k songs results in an iPod sale then Apple still clears an additional 2500 ipods sold. If apple is clearing an average of $150 per iPod (wouldnt be suprised with their crazy margins) then thats over 375k in EXTRA iPods sold. And what if every 100 iPods ends up resulting in a Mac... see it goes on and on.
The point is not making a profit isn't a bad thing if it increases positive mindshare and overall company value, which this is obviously doing.
--- I do not moderate.
I'm sorry if that offends you. I know I should just leave the car open, because anything else is simply assuming that all the people walking the streets are criminals.
I guess I'm just disrespectfull of my fellow man.
The only way independent labels can compete is with the RIAA's off the service
this can't be right. when you're on a service like that where you can pick and choose tunes, marketing dollars etc ought to be LESS powerful and it becomes a more even playing field for the independent labels? it doesnt take me any longer to click a link to a non-RIAA label song to one that is.
Exactly. The music industry's original reason for existance was lowering the barrier to access to music. Before records became commonplace the only way to listen to music was to see a live performance. In short, you had to dedicate either a lot of time or a lot of money if you wanted to enjoy music. Then the record industry came along and suddenly people could affordably listen to their favourite music whenever they wanted, as often as they wanted. It led to the decline of live music (live music used to be EVERYWHERE), but it made music more popular.
The inherent problem with the music industry is that they have forgotten they should be making it easier to listen to music. Obtaining music nowadays is no easier than it was 30 years ago, and in fact, it's become slightly harder due to raised pricing (more than inflation), the reduction of music sampling opportunities (less music on the radio, no in-store sampling), and the introduction of technologies which make it more difficult to listen to bought music the way you want (the various copy protection systems). This is why itunes is so successful. It makes sampling and obtaining music dramatically easier, while at the same time lowering prices.
If I was a music industry exec I'd be spending all my time finding ways to make it easier for customers to buy my product. But then, that's just crazy talk.
Look, you may not like the RIAA, but please don't use the word terrorism where its not appropriate. We need a very strong word to describe 9/11 and some of the slaughters that go on in africa. Inappropriate use of the word devalues it's power.